As is well known in the art, a conventional air conditioning system includes a pair of refrigerant flow lines comprising a plurality of pipe, commonly called “liquid lines” and “suction lines.” Throughout air conditioning systems, suction lines transport evaporated refrigerant and liquid lines transport liquified refrigerant. It is commonplace in the art for practitioners to use copper pipe to implement liquid lines and suction lines for transporting liquid refrigerant such as R-22.
R-22 refrigerant, a hydrochlorofluorocarbon, must be replaced with the more environmentally-friendly R-410A refrigerant by the Jan. 1, 2010 deadline. R-410A consists of a mixture of difluoromethane and pentafluoroethane. Accordingly, as of Jan. 1, 2010 air conditioning equipment designed to accommodate R-22 will no longer be produced.
Nevertheless, thousands—if not millions—of residential and light commercial air conditioning systems installed prior to Jan. 1, 2010 will still operate based upon R-22. Unfortunately, since R-22 is incompatible with R-410A, such preexisting air conditioning systems must be completely purged of any R-22 before the systems are converted to a R-410A basis.
Of course, one approach for converting existing air conditioning systems for use with newer but incompatible refrigerants is to completely replace the existing refrigerant flow lines, typically comprising copper piping. However, as will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, conversion old R-22 refrigerant lines to new R-410A refrigerant lines tends to be cost-prohibitive due to the relatively high price of copper and to the implicated construction costs.
As will be apparent to those skilled in the art, another approach for replacing one refrigerant with another incompatible refrigerant is to flush or purge plurality of copper lines with suitable commercial solvent. Such a flush procedure should be implemented in such a manner to assure removal of all contaminants, thereby rendering the pipelines suitable for use with selected or government-mandated new refrigerants. The present invention teaches an apparatus and associated methodology for safely, efficiently, and expeditiously purging refrigerant lines associated with residential and light commercial air conditioning system, thereby eliminating the necessity to wholly replace the preexisting plurality of copper lines.